Around the Web

Again, my iPhone is my perfect little swiss army knife. I’m always amazed at how there is a feature or app that can make my life a little simpler or save me a few more steps. This is a great walk through of quickly signing a PDF someone has mailed you without printing, signing, scanning […]

I was able to snag an Apple Pencil for my iPad pro a few weeks ago and I honestly LOVE it. I’ve spend countless $$ on bluetooth / pressure sensitive styli that underperformed at every turn. Adonit was my favorite but at the end of the day, if I couldn’t rest my hand on the […]

I’m a huge believer / user in Automator in Mac OS X. It’s a wonderfully simple way of scripting and automating actions that any user can use to improve productivity. I hate spending time slogging through mundane and repetitive tasks that take away from other more interesting work. To that end I’m excited by Workflow for […]

I was not a fan of keyboards for my iPads until I picked up one for a client and decided to try one for myself. I actually liked the ability to take my “mini-macbook air” with me to appointments and type longform notes and text on a really keyboard with a fullscreen app. This one […]

Not that I condone exploding blocks (not as bad as exploding dimensions, but still a no-no) but there are times when it is necessary. Take a look at what may be preventing you from exploding a block in your drawing (works on Mac too.)

Autodesk University is a conference held every year where 8,000 – 10,000 drafters and designers pay more than $3,000 each to fly to Las Vegas and talk about AutoCAD (and other Autodesk products) for a week. It’s a wonderful event I have been honored to speak at for the past 4 years. If you are […]

I’ve been having a lot of issue with Chrome lately (mostly on the PC side) so it’s nice to see Google finally update Chrome, even if it is on the Mac side. Along with 64 bit support (finally) there are some new API’s for developers and some security fixes.

How To

Great (if slightly advanced) tips on getting full control over your Mac’s volume. I also use the option key when clicking on the volume menu button to control the input / output sources of my audio. I regularly have different mics / headphones attached in varying ways (bluetooth usually) and this allows me to choose where my sound is coming from (or being recording from) at the drop of a hat. More

I’ve found the messages app to be more and more useful as each version of Mac OS X has arrived. Between adding text messages and screen sharing back into Messages proper, it has become my go to messaging app. I only wish the iOS version were as useful. I’d love to add messaging protocols like gmail chat to my iOS messaging app and keep all my messaging together like I do on my desktop. This is a great little walkthrough about pulling images from your messages to save and use later. Straightforward but still a great tip. More

Repairing disk permissions can help fix buggy issues you may have form time to time in Mac OS X but it is also a misunderstood toll that should only be used when needed as it can have unexpected results. Take a look at the article and see if repairing permissions is the right step for you. More

I often get calls from clients asking about the “other” space they find in their Mac OS X machine. While I typically use Disk Inventory X as a tool for determining where & what files are taking up space, this is a great article on finding and removing some of that “Other” stuff that seems to crop up in Mac OS X.

Disk utility can be a very powerful tool in you Mac arsenal and I highly recommend becoming familiar with it. As we move to a post-optical drive age, disk images and similar services provided by Disk utility are more and more required. Take a look at this helpful article from Macworld More

Mail got a number of improvements in Yosemite (though personally I’m still having some issues with syncing my Godaddy IMAP accounts) and one of the neater features is Markup. You can add arrows and other shapes as well as text or even a magnifying loupe to your documents and images before sending them, all from within Mail. Take a look! More

Continuity has been a great feature in Yosemite (and iOS 8) and I’m a big fan of the text message forwarding (though you may want to be careful with this feature, as mentioned in this post about two-factor authentication. The instant Wi-Fi feature is another tool in continuity that many of my users find quite handy. Take a look at this great walkthrough from OSXDaily. More

Nothing can be more confusing for an average user than when something as simple as opening or saving a file becomes difficult or impossible because the dialog box has become too large to fit on the screen or too small to see what you want. This is a great tip on setting the sizes and working with the sometimes buggy dialog windows in Yosemite. More

If you attended AU 2015, upload your pics to Shaan Hurley’s Flickr pool. If you didn’t make it, go take a look at all of the fun you missed! I think there was a little learning this year too . . . Check out Shaan’s post

Confused? So am I, a little. Frame announced at AU this year that they obtained complete certification from Autodesk for applications in a virtual environment. I need to pour into this a little deeper (and you can too in the article below) but you can now run Revit, fully supported in a browser. If so, […]

This Thursday (December 10, 2015 @ 11am PDT) I will be guest speaking on the weekly Autodesk Web Series “Build Your AutoCAD IQ.” My topic will be the new features of AutoCAD for Mac 2016. If you are using AutoCAD for Mac or wondering if the feature set has improved since you checked it out last, […]

This Thursday (June 4, 2015 @ 11am PDT) I will be guest speaking on the weekly Autodesk Web Series “Build Your AutoCAD IQ.” My topic will be what else but AutoCAD for Mac. If you are interested in AutoCAD for Mac but not sure of the differences / capabilities, register below and stop by for […]

I must admit I don’t use Limits in my drawings usually and don’t usually tech them to my students, but I can see how useful they might be to some users after reading this article. I haven’t used limits in a drawing in 15 years but I might have to give them another look . […]

Many of my clients forward me similar emails so I want to take a moment and highlight the issue here on the site. This is a screen shot one of my clients received a week ago notifying him is iCloud account was locked and asking him to click a link to unlock it. THIS IS […]

I’ve mentioned before I think the AU website is a great resource for users as they provide free access to the recordings, presentations and handouts from previous AU sessions. It looks like Robert Green agrees in his latest article from the CAD Manager’s Toolbox! Take a look and go sign up!